Magic Elizabeth Page 4

  She took a deep breath and continued on up the stairs. Despite the light from the single bulb, which she could scarcely see far up in the dusty rafters, it was very dark. The tiny windows high up on the walls were so covered with dirt and cobwebs that it seemed the sun must never get through them. Another tall mirror, leaning against an old chest of drawers, reflected a dusty picture of herself, looking quite lost and bewildered beneath the heavy cobwebs which hung like gray lace from the rafters. She could hear Shadow again, chasing something across the floor. Nothing else at all was moving in that great silent house. Sally began to walk around the attic, peering into corners, behind old bureaus and broken cupboards, and chairs and sofas with the stuffing leaking out.

  Pushed back against the walls there were a number of old-fashioned trunks, some tall and thin, with fancy golden keys protruding from their fronts. They looked like enormous musical toys that would begin playing a solemn sort of music if the keys were turned. Others were squat, their rounded tops stripped with brass. Sally, attracted by a faint glimmer in one corner, approached it and found, hanging from a hook in the wall, a shimmering dress of silver sequins. It swayed as if it were dancing, and she touched it gently, wondering who had worn it. Surely not Aunt Sarah. Like the melodeon and the bed, it was far too pretty.

  And just then, oddly enough, a finger of sunlight managed to make its faltering way through a tiny space in one of the cobwebbed windows. It shuddered across the attic and fell on a trunk, lighting up a small brass rectangle attached to the front of its rounded lid. Sally walked closer to the trunk and peered down at it. Something was written on the little brass plate, scratched into it. She bent closer, and rubbed at the dust that coated it. “Sally,” it said, in the finest, most delicate writing she had ever seen. It was just as if the trunk had spoken to her.

  As if in a dream, she reached out and lifted the trunk’s heavy lid.

  Chapter 6 - The Diary

  The trunk opened with a faint, protesting screech. A puff of dust rose from its interior. Sally began to cough. She closed her eyes and waved her arms at the dust. When she opened her eyes, the dust had settled somewhat and she could see in the trunk, at the very top, the rather crumpled but still bright yellow bonnet that the other Sally was wearing in the painting. Trembling with excitement, she lifted the bonnet from the trunk and brushed at the fine dust that covered it. Carefully, she placed it upon her head. She found that it fitted her exactly. She ran over to the mirror, looked at herself, and tied the ribbons in a bow beneath her chin. Yes, it was the very bonnet in the picture, and she did look just like the other Sally, “except for the rest of my clothes,” she thought, looking down at her short skirt and saddle shoes. She could see a corner of the open trunk behind her in the mirror, and remembering that there were other things in it, she hurried back and reached again into the trunk. This time she brought out the pale blue dress in the picture, and then a lace-edged petticoat and a pair of high-buttoned shoes. She was laughing out loud with delight by now, and Shadow had come to watch her. He sat in a pale patch of sunlight on the dusty floor, blinking in a superior sort of way each time she laughed, as if he were warning, “You won’t be laughing for long.” But Sally was far too excited to worry about him now.

  However, she did look anxiously toward the stairs for a minute, and she listened before removing her own clothes and putting on the others. But all that she could hear in the rest of the house was the steady ticking of the grandfather clock.

  She found the shoes rather hard to manage. The little round buttons kept slipping from her fingers, and at last she left a number of them undone. She wondered how the other Sally had made them work. Everything, even the shoes, fitted perfectly. She ran to the mirror and could hardly believe what she saw. She looked just like the other Sally in the picture. “I am the other Sally!” she whispered. She swayed back and forth, dreamily watching how the skirt swirled around her shoe tops. And as she swayed, she found that her hands were curving in front of her, as if they were holding something. The doll, she thought — that was the one part of the picture still missing.

  The trunk! The doll had to be in the trunk! Oh, what if Aunt Sarah came back now! She ran frantically back to the trunk, leaned over its side, and reached again into its dark interior. Her hand closed upon something hard and slender, and she drew it out. She was holding the handle of a rolled silk parasol. She pressed the little button on the handle. Slowly the parasol creaked open, revealing layer after layer of pink ruffles. It was like watching a rosebud open. How pretty it looked, blooming there in the dark attic. “Did the other Sally carry the parasol on sunny days?” she wondered.

  But she put it down almost immediately and took up the search for the doll, feeling that at any moment she might hear Aunt Sarah’s footsteps downstairs.

  This time she began throwing things helter-skelter from the trunk, shawls and muffs, dresses and gloves. She even found a doll, but the wrong doll entirely — a very nice doll with a china face and brown hair, but not at all the one she wanted. She felt like crying with disappointment as she laid her gently upon the growing pile of clothes on the attic floor.

  At last there was nothing else at all in the trunk. She was ready to put everything back when she noticed, way at the very bottom in a dark corner, a small book. She leaned over the side of the trunk, picked the book up, and brought it out. The covers of the book were of soft brown leather, and there were some letters stamped on it in gold. But because it was quite dark where she was sitting, she could not read them. She looked around the attic for a spot where there might be a little more light, and found that Shadow was still sitting in the small pool of thin sunlight that made its way through one of the dusty windows. Sally looked uncertainly at him, and then walked over and sat down next to him. She held the little book into the light. Stamped upon the cover was the word DIARY, and beneath it, 1899. Sally opened the soft cover and looked at the first page. “Sally” was written there. The yellowed old page seemed to be whispering her name in a graceful handwriting which had faded over the years to a very faint brown. Beneath the name was written, “Age ten.”

  “Why, she was my age,” Sally thought, and she turned the brittle old page with trembling fingers. “January First” read the printing at the top of this page. The writing beneath it looked almost golden in the faint light. The words seemed to have been very carefully formed, and with their pretty loops and swirls they gave a lacy appearance to the page. Here and there the words had tumbled and spilled a bit over the faded blue lines of the paper. As she sat there on the attic floor, reading what the other Sally had written so long ago, Sally felt almost as if the other Sally was speaking to her, and that if she was, her voice would sound just the way the pretty golden handwriting looked. Perhaps, she thought, the other Sally had written this page with the feather pen on the desk in her room, sitting there on a day like this one, tickling her cheek with the tip of the feather and thinking …

  But no, it wouldn’t have been a day like this at all — it was New Year’s Day, and maybe it was snowing …

  “Dear Diary,” the other Sally had begun, “I will write something every day. It snowed and snowed all day, and yesterday too. Mama says we will be snowbound if it continues. I do hope so, for then I will not go to school. But I suppose I would take my lessons with Mama. It is cozy inside with Mama and Papa and little Bub. He is my baby brother and we call him Bub because he makes bubbling sounds with his mouth. Mrs. Perkins helps my mama to care for him. She is very funny, because she calls everyone, even kittens, ‘dear little things.’ My Aunt Tryphone lives here too and she is very old. Her father knew George Washington when he was President, but I do wish she would not say it so much. I was playing with my rag doll Elizabeth [so that was the doll’s name, thought Sally — Elizabeth!] in my bedroom tonight, and Mama came and said that she had a surprise in the kitchen. It was a wonderful surprise! My black cat, Mrs. Niminy Piminy, has three new kittens! Their eyes are not open yet. I gave one of them to Elizabeth,
and we played by the fire in the kitchen. Elizabeth’s cat is named Tom, and he is black like Mrs. Niminy Piminy. I think that Elizabeth and Tom will be good friends.”

  Sally turned the page very carefully, because the paper was so brittle that she was afraid of tearing it. But to her disappointment the other Sally had not kept her promise to write every day in her diary at all. Sally turned page after page, hoping that there was more. But it was not until July 10 that she found another entry.

  She settled back with a sigh of relief and began to read:

  “Mama said that I must take care of Bub and Patience in the garden. Patience is a little girl and I did not want to play with her, and Bub cried a lot. But Mama said that I must, for Patience and her mama were coming to visit. Patience broke the handle of one of my little teacups [so that was how it got broken, thought Sally, remembering the little cup without a handle in the cupboard downstairs]. I told her I didn’t care, but I really did. And then Elizabeth saved a little hoptoad’s life! She fell over and she made me notice that Tom was trying to catch it, and the toad hopped right into my cup of tea and we laughed. Mama let me light the gas plant at night. I saw Tom holding Elizabeth in his mouth and I made him put her down. That naughty Tom! He thinks that Elizabeth belongs to him!”

  Again, the entries stopped for a long time. It was not until December 24 that there was another. But the writing on this page had changed. It sloped down and had grown smaller and rather pinched-looking. Something was wrong, thought Sally, and she began to read:

  “Papa took Mama and me in the sleigh to get our Christmas tree from the forest. It is very big. We put Elizabeth on top for a Christmas-tree angel. She looked very beautiful. Mama played the melodeon and we all sang Christmas carols. When I looked around, Elizabeth was gone! We cannot find her anywhere. I miss her very much.”

  Sally thought that perhaps a teardrop had fallen on this page, for the ink was smudged toward the end.

  She sighed deeply, thinking of what a sad Christmas Eve that must have been for the other Sally, but she turned the page, confident that Elizabeth would be found the next day. To her surprise, there were no more entries in the little diary. That was all.

  “But what could have happened?” she wondered, looking up at the tiny bits of dust dancing in the shaft of sunlight.

  “Did she find Elizabeth?” she asked, looking at Shadow. But Shadow only blinked his eyes and yawned.

  They must have found her! She couldn’t just disappear forever, could she? She must have fallen down among the branches of the tree, and the next day they found her.

  But did they?

  “I wish I knew for sure,” she said.

  She turned and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Where is Elizabeth?” she whispered to the girl in the mirror.

  Chapter 7 - The Mirror

  But the girl in the mirror did not answer, of course.

  Sally stood there in the strange clothes, gazing at her reflected self in the dusty mirror and wondering how it had felt to be the other Sally.

  “I do look just like her,” she thought.

  She lifted her hand. The girl in the mirror lifted hers. She waggled her fingers at the mirror. The other girl did the same. She smiled. So did the girl in the mirror. She took off her bonnet. The mirror girl took hers off. They both placed the bonnet upon the floor, still smiling at each other.

  They straightened and stood looking rather uncomfortably at each other, arms hanging at their sides, fingers twiddling a little.

  “I wonder if you really did look so much like me,” Sally whispered at last. “Did you feel like me? Were you ever sad or scared like me? I guess you were when Elizabeth was lost, weren’t you?” And it seemed to her that it might be the girl in the mirror who was asking her those very questions.

  She sat down.

  The girl in the mirror sat down.

  Wouldn’t it be funny, she thought, if that really was the other Sally in the mirror. “Do you think there’s such a thing as magic?” she whispered to the other girl. The girl in the mirror seemed to be asking the same thing. Sally reached up and rubbed a clear space upon the dusty surface of the mirror, and of course the other girl from her side of the mirror did the same thing.

  Maybe, Sally thought, that really was the other Sally in there. She leaned closer to the mirror. “There,” she whispered, “can you see me better? I can see you.” Her breath had made a little circle of mist on the mirror. Or was it the other girl’s breath, clouding it from the other side? You couldn’t really tell for sure, Sally thought, feeling as if she’d made an enormous discovery. Did anyone know for sure? Maybe she was a reflection to her. Maybe the other Sally could see her too.

  “Sally,” called a voice, very close by.

  Sally jumped and looked toward the attic stairs. Her heart turned over. “It’s Aunt Sarah!” she thought. But there was no one in the attic but herself and Shadow, sleepily watching her from his patch of sunlight. The slow drowsy dust was drifting, rising, falling. Shadow yawned. The deep pink cavern of his mouth widened so that it seemed he might swallow the attic — trunks, cobwebs, Sally, and all. She yawned too, and rubbed her eyes. She felt very stiff, and she stretched and yawned again. “I must be imagining things,” she told herself.

  When she turned back to the mirror, she saw that the reflected girl was looking over her shoulder too, just as if she had heard the voice.

  It was a moment before Sally realized how strange this was.

  There was a cold, prickly feeling along the back of her neck. “But I’m not looking over my shoulder now,” she said aloud. Tick, tick, tick, said the grandfather clock from the hallway below. Tick, tick, tick. How loud it was suddenly.

  It was just then that the girl in the mirror spoke. “What is it, Mama?” she asked quite clearly, and with her profile still turned to the astonished Sally, she looked up and smiled.

  Sally stretched a trembling hand out to the mirror. She placed her palm against it. She could feel only its cold smooth surface.

  But just as if she were not aware that she was only a reflection in a mirror, the other girl was now standing up. She reached a hand up, still smiling, and another hand reached down, clasped hers, and helped her to her feet.

  Sally stood watching on the other side of the mirror. “This is the strangest thing that ever happened to me,” she told herself. But even as she said it, something else happened. Quite suddenly, she was the girl in the mirror. It was her hand in the hand of the lady who stood smiling down at her, a lady who looked somehow like a much younger and far more pleasant Aunt Sarah!

  “Come,” said the other Sally’s mother, and Sally could see quite clearly — for of course she was now seeing everything from inside the mirror — how the lady’s eyes seemed to be smiling too, in the sparkly way that eyes do sometimes. How pretty she was! Her red hair was exactly the color of her daughter’s. “Come along down to the kitchen,” she said. “I have a surprise for you!”

  “A surprise!” cried Sally — for now there was truly only one Sally. “What is it?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?” answered her mother in a teasing voice. “Come along. Don’t forget Elizabeth.”

  And Sally bent to pick the doll up from the floor, where she had been lying all the time, just behind her.

  Sally could see now that they were not in the attic at all, but in her bedroom. “Now how could I have thought I was in the attic?” she wondered as she followed her mother to the door, skipping a little as she went and hugging dear old Elizabeth close to her. “How funny,” she said, pausing at the door and looking back around the room. “What’s funny?” asked her mother impatiently.

  “Oh, I don’t know — the room, I guess — the walls look so blue —” She yawned. “Excuse me,” she said.

  “Gracious!” said her mother, staring down at her. “Of course they’re blue! They’ve been that way for years. Maybe the light at night makes them look a little different.”
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  “Yes,” said Sally. “The lights — they look strange to me too — it’s as if I never noticed them before — the little flames — the way they dance and sputter under the glass.” She laughed and looked up at the familiar gas fixtures on the wall. “Isn’t that funny?” she said. “They look so new to me, and my bowl and pitcher — do I really break the ice on my bowl in the morning before I wash my face? It seems like such a queer thing to do.”

  “Goodness gracious!” said her mother, placing a cool hand upon her forehead. “Are you feverish? No, just a bit warm.” She glanced over at the fire crackling in the little green fireplace. “I expect you’ve been sitting too near the fire for too long.”

  “I guess I was dreaming,” said Sally. “I think I must have fallen asleep by the fire just before you came in. Yes, I was dreaming — I remember now — I think I was dreaming that I was living in another time — but in this house — and I was scared. I think I was scared of a witch!” As she looked up at her mother, she could feel her lips trembling.

  Her mother laughed and gently smoothed her hair. “My little dreamer,” she sighed. “I hope you smiled your prettiest and made the witch disappear.”

  Sally shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she said.

  “Well,” said her mother briskly, “it’s no wonder you were sleeping. It’s very late. You really ought to be in bed. Now come, please; no more nonsense if you want to see the surprise.”

  Sally gave a little hop of pure pleasure. The dream was almost forgotten. “Let’s go now,” she said. But just as they were leaving the room, the edge of one of the windows caught her eye. “Why, it’s snowing!” she said.

  “Oh my goodness, I do declare!” cried her mother, stopping and placing her hands on her hips, and looking down at her with a perplexed frown creasing her forehead. “Why, you’re still half asleep.” She sighed and brushed at the front of Sally’s dress. “And your dress is all wrinkled. Of course it’s snowing! You know very well it’s been snowing for days and days. We’re very nearly snow-bound.”